Guide to Internet Business
- Website Setup

by: Steven O. Ng

After planning the design
and content of your website, it's time to actually
physically set up your website. This is the step
where you put all your designs and plans into
action, creating a website that will attract visitors
and earn income.

a) WEBHOSTING

A webhost is a company that stores the pages and
pictures and other files of your website. When
a person visits your website, they will request
these files from your webhost's server so they
can view the website. When choosing a webhost,
be careful to choose one that is reliable. After
all, if your webhost has problems for any reason,
people won't be able to visit your website, and
you won't be earning any money.

In addition, different webhosts have varying services
and tools that they offer. Some of the more important
points to consider when choosing a webhost are
as follows:

* SPACE AND BANDWIDTH - Space refers to how much
file storage space is available for your website.
For a standard website with about 20 pages with
graphics, 30MB is plenty. Online stores might
require more space depending on how many products
and pictures you have. Bandwidth refers to how
many files can be downloaded and viewed by visitors
per month. A normal website with reasonable traffic
(200 visitors a day) will need about 2GB bandwidth.
Again, if you own a business with lots of products
and webpages, you might need more bandwidth.
* DOMAINS AND SUBDOMAINS - Usually, webhosting
accounts are charged per domain, with $10 per
domain being a reasonable price. However, you
can buy larger hosting packages that allow you
to host multiple domains and websites on the same
account. Subdomains are just different sections
of your website's domain, with 5 subdomains the
rough standard. You will need to make sure how
many domains your account entitles you for, in
order to calculate which is the better webhosting
package.
* EMAILS AND AUTORESPONDERS - Emails are the various
email addresses that visitors can write to you.
Most websites will use about 2 or 3 emails (maybe
a webmaster email and a support email). Autoresponders
are email addresses that will reply someone with
an automatic email. You will only need autoresponders
if you are on vacation and wish to leave an automated
reply in case anybody emails you.
* SCRIPTS - If you want to add extra functionality
(such as forums or polls), you will need to be
able to run scripts. Make sure your webhost allows
you to run scripts for your website. The more
common scripts are Java, PHP, Perl and CGI.

There are a number of companies out there that
offer free webhosting, but they usually have severe
limitations, and might place their own ads on
your website. If you are serious in building your
internet business, it is recommended to sign up
for a proper webhosting service. We recommend
HostGator, which provides different levels of
webhosting depending on your requirements and
budget, with various useful tools as well. In
any case, you shouldn't be paying more than $10
a month per domain for basic webhosting services.

b) PROGRAMMING

Some people with sufficient HTML knowledge use
word processing programs to directly code the
HTML for their websites. For the rest of us who
don't have such skill, we recommend one of the
popular graphical programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver
or Microsoft Frontpage. These programs allow you
to create your webpages with mouse clicks with
little need for knowledge in HTML.

If you want to make your website look like another
website, you can "copy" their HTML and
modify it to fit your website. In Internet Explorer,
click the "View" menu, then click the
"Source" option. This will show you
the HTML code for the website. You will need some
HTML knowledge to make sense of this and use it
on your website.

If you need more information and examples on the
many things that HTML can do, you can visit the
online tutorial at W3Schools.

c) FILE ORGANIZATION AND TRANSFER

Once you have your webhosting set up and your
webpages completed, you need to transfer the completed
pages to your webhosting server. If you are using
a graphical program like Dreamweaver to work on
your webpages, you can configure Dreamweaver to
transfer the files for you.

If you are doing it manually, you need to transfer
the files via FTP. Your webhost will provide you
with an FTP server, with a user id and password
for you to access your account on the webhost.
Once you connect to the account via FTP, you will
be able to upload (transfer files from your computer
to the server) or download (transfer files from
the server to your computer) or modify files as
required.

You can FTP to the server using your computer's
Windows Explorer, by entering the FTP server's
address in your explorer's Address Toolbar. Or
you can use specialized FTP programs such as AceFTP.

d) ADDITIONAL SCRIPTS

If you want to add extra functionality to your
website, such as polls, newsletter subscription
forms and other interactive programs, you will
need to install scripts onto your website.

If you are looking for scripts to create a newsletter
mailing list, do note that some webhosting services
also provide mailing list scripts. If your webhost
doesn't provide it, BigNoseBird has a good email
list management software.

For other scripts and functionality, you can check
out the popular scripts at websites such as BigNoseBird
and HotScripts.

When you've finished setting up your website and
getting it launched, the next step will be to
start looking at the various means to attract
visitors at:
http://www.onlinebiz-help.com/step4.html

About The Author

Steven is the webmaster of http://www.onlinebiz-help.com.
His website contains various resources on affiliate
programs and internet marketing advice to help
you succeed in your internet business, including
a Step-By-Step Guide to get you started.